Such a utensil often has a lower guide plate and an upper guide plate adjoining the same, the upper guide plate having on its front edge a horizontal blade and so extending obliquely in the direction of cutting, and a plurality of vertical blades being disposed on the lower guide plate in front of the horizontal blade.
Depending on the distance from the upper guide plate or horizontal blade to the lower guide plate and on the spacing of the vertical blades, such kitchen utensils can be used to cut strips of various thicknesses and usually of square cross-section, ranging from thick strips, for example, for chipped potatoes or french fries, down to shreds, for example, for raw vegetable dishes, soup garnishes or the like.
There are various proposed kinds of such kitchen utensil. One form, in particular, derives from the Applicant. It is characterised by a horizontal blade of V-shape and a removable lower guide plate as shown in West German No. 19 19 675 A, published Nov. 5, 1970. A modified version of this apparatus is provided in addition with special inserts. These can be combined with the lower guide plate and permit finer cutting, in other words the cutting of thinner strips. In all versions the vertical blades have cutting edges which extend to the level of the horizontal blade.
A disadvantage is that the vertical blades, being offset laterally with respect to the transverse direction of the utensil, are made and attached to the lower guide plate individually. In the Applicant's previously proposed kitchen utensils, the vertical blades are individual lengths cut from a continuous sheet metal strip. Each length is bent to form a foot, and each blade is then placed individually in an injection moulding die and set in synthetic plastics material. This, of course, is a time consuming and expensive operation.
Moreover, manipulation of the individual blades demands a certain thickness of material, in order to prevent excessive deformation. Usually, therefore, the sheet metal strips used are a few tenths of a millimeter thick, typically three tenths of a millimeter. This in turn makes it necessary to sharpen the metal strip, in order to ensure that the cutting edge is sharp enough. Manipulation of a number of such blades also involves a considerable risk of injury.
Since the sheet metal strip can be ground only along its long side in practice, the cutting edges on the resulting vertical blades are only on the steep front sides. The tops, by contrast, remain blunt. They exhibit the shape imparted to them when the metal strip was cut up.
Lastly, the thicknesses of material impede the cutting action. While the cutting edges can facilitate penetration of a fruit by the vertical blades, the vertically cut flesh of the fruit must then pass through the available gaps between the vertical blades. The unobstructed dimensions of each of these gaps are reduced by one thickness of material. This involves the displacement of a considerable quantity of material, the quantity increasing with the number of vertical blades provided over the width of the utensil. A utensil with 23 vertical blades each of three tenths of a millimeter thickness, for example, will have the unobstructed passage reduced by 6.9 millimeters, which of course interferes appreciably with cutting.
To summarise, therefore, proposed utensils with vertical blades are complicated to produce and do not provide convenience of cutting. Since such kitchen utensils have been used for a long time and millions are produced, this problem is of great importance.